Doesn't age well - even in the short term!

Rating: Null/10 (18 April 2004)

With much to like admittedly, I think the IMDb rating here is an absurdly generous one. You want to tell me this is as good as PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK???
Regrettably the entire film spirals downwards from the opening ten minutes. Jim's awakening in a London hospital to a deserted London is lifted directly from THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (They actually achieved an empty and windswept city, NOT by computerised FX but by filming at 6.30 am and having several streets closed off one after the other.) From here the film lurches into I AM LEGEND / OMEGA MAN territory with mild mannered bicycle courier Jim becoming progressively less mild mannered.
By the film's end, JIM is fully RAMBOesque taking out trained combat soldiers. This is total bulls---! A weak-as-p*ss ending does nothing for the film either, including the alternate ending...with the "chicken!"
Some of the best moments of the film are when the four survivors are being chased by the "infected" through darkened streets and buildings in very much THIRD MAN lensed sequences.
Two things grate on me. NO infection could cause ravenous zombified behavior in seconds and to the best of my knowledge, Britain has more than sixty million registered private vehicles. Er, where did the zombies PUT them? and why are the freeways completely empty?...there would be cars from one end of the country to the other...hundreds of thousands. We saw but a handful the entire film.